Reason reports:

In August of 2018, the Widner kids—then ages 13, 11, nine, and seven—were members of a swim team at their local YMCA, which was about two blocks from their house. One day, after swim practice, the 7-year-old, Jackson, lagged behind while the rest of his siblings walked home, and stopped by the grocery for a free cookie.

A store employee thought it was so unusual to see an unaccompanied 7-year-old that a store employee called 911. Then, instead of letting him leave, the employee told Jackson he had to wait for the police to arrive.

This became part of a pattern; indeed, Jackson’s semi-independence attracted police attention on no fewer than three occasions, leading to two investigations by Child Protective Services (CPS). …

After the police finally brought Jackson home, they informed his father, Glenn, that it wasn’t safe to let a child his age wander around outside.

“You just can’t raise kids like that anymore—it isn’t safe,” said the cops.

Glenn begged to differ, reciting statistics that kids today face no greater risk from stranger danger than previous generations. Nevertheless, the police summoned child protective services.

Soon thereafter, Beth got a call from Jackson, using the new watch phone his parents had gotten him after the August incident. He said the police wanted to speak to her. Once again, cops had detained Jackson for being outside unsupervised.

Beth got to the grocery parking lot within a couple of minutes. She found Jackson seated like a suspect in the backseat of a cruiser. The complaining witness watched as the police let Beth take her son home. Beth wasn’t told what to expect further, and she didn’t hear from child services. But she later learned that child services had been informed about Jackson’s flagrant act of unaccompanied bike riding. …

One of the police officers accused Glenn of “breaking the law” by letting Jackson go out alone. “What law is that?” Glenn inquired.  The officer replied, “You can Google it.” The most senior officer accused him of neglect and “contributing to delinquency of the minor,” and told him not only could he be arrested, but he might face felony charges and spend time in jail.

This is awful over-reach. I live near a playground and sometimes I let my kids to go to it a few minutes ahead of me, while I clean up the dishes.

I’m actually pretty cautious and won’t let my seven year old walk or scoot around the neighbourhood alone, but will sometimes say yes if he has a similar aged friend with him. At some stage I’ll loosen the strings more.

These are decisions for parents to make, based on how well we know our kids, and our neighbourhoods. There is no role for the Police except where a child is manifestly too young to be outside alone, or is lost.

This takes climate hysteria to a new level. It’s like a return to the Dark Ages.

When the school attendance crisis became fully evident the, then, Minister of Education (Hipkins), blamed parents and said it was up to them to get kids to school. He dared not blame the schools.

In opposition Seymour was fierce and inspiring. Parents were to be given enough money each year so as to be able to choose their ECE and school. Schools had to improve or shut down. The Ministry of education was going to go from 4,400 staff back to the pre 2018 number of 2,700 – which was already bizarrely inflated with seat warmers.

In government that lion has turned 180 degrees (baaa). The Ministry of Education has not yet shed an employee and are one of Seeks best customers. None of the disastrous top 12 have been sent to Ukraine. There is nothing yet about parents having their choices enhanced. And – Seymour’s solution to the attend crisis is more quickly publishing system wide data – when it needs to be school by school every week – and he is going to fine parents.

David suddenly seems afraid of the unions and the schools. ACT is the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. They used to stand for small government. They used to stand for families and not against them. I took my three children to Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan when they were at primary school. They missed some school but learned a year’s worth of experience. I would not be paying a fine and neither will anyone else.

NZ schools and teachers have lost a big segment of the room. We have 2,600 schools and a large portion of those I would not be advising any parent to simply send their kids along without a lot of due diligence and complete assurance that their child will be taught well and be free from bullying from the BoT, Principal, teachers and other children.

Forcing children back into school is no solution. As a good friend states – the school is often the source of a child’s trauma. If the only reason a child is at school is that the parent has been fined … how do you think that will turn out?

The solution is almost all school based.

The bottom lines:

• teachers need to become people the vast majority of young people (and their parents) want to learn from. They need to be well qualified and, primary teachers (by their own admission) are not confident in Math and Science they need to do NCEA L2 in both.

• schools need to be seen as being highly purposeful, and safe – good places to be EVERY day.

• schools and teachers need to win back credibility by being open every day. No teacher only days (especially on the Thursday before Good Friday), strikes, or parent teacher interviews in school time after sending the kids home (a really weird development).

• NCEA/NZQA needs to regain full credibility as a qualification worth striving for. Postponing improvement for a few years is kicking the can down the road. Seymour and Stanford need to employ the very best people and have everything flying in 2026 … it is not that hard!

• much of our emphasis needs to be different. I love sport but some of it has gone well over the top. The high quality boys school – St Peters in Epsom has their leavers graduating with UE at 93% (Auckland Grammar at 74%)  The provincial boys schools who call themselves the Super 8 have a low of 14.3% Rotorua Boys and a high of 42% Napier Boys. But if their 1st XV has had a good year all is chipper.

Seymour’s hair colour may differ from that of Hipkins but, so far, it is a NCEA style “Not Achieved” for the Associate Minister.

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

This is so scathing. The Auckland Light Rail fiasco:

• Blew out costs by 700% to 1100% in five years
• Promoted transport options which bear no resemblance to the cost envelopes
• Did not rule out the tunnel option even after costs doubled then doubled again

What a gigantic waste of money it all was.

The NZ Jewish Council has analysed the hate crime data from the NZ Police. His executive summary:

• Police reported hate crimes targeting Jews in New Zealand increased 583% from 2022 to 2023. 
• Jewish New Zealanders are disproportionately targeted for hate crimes. Despite making up only 0.2% of the population, NZ Police Oct-Dec 2023 data shows that:
  • 13% of all reported hate crimes in the Auckland Region were against Jews;10% of all reported hate crimes in the Wellington Region were against Jews; and
  • 10% of all reported hate crimes in the Tasman Region were against Jews.
• Jewish New Zealanders are 160 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than a European New Zealander.
• Jewish New Zealanders are 18 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than a Maori New Zealander.
• Jewish New Zealanders are 1.7 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than a Middle Eastern New Zealander.
• Hate crimes against Jewish New Zealanders are increasing at a rate more than 5 times higher than the next group of victims, Middle Eastern New Zealanders. 

It is disappointing that NZ media doesn’t seem to consider this is newsworthy.

Also of interest:

Data on the offenders of hate crime^[1] shows that Māori are more likely to commit a hate crime per capita than any other group (approx 1.4 incidents per 1,000 population compared to 0.4 for Pasifika, 0.3 for Europeans, 0.2 for Indians, and 0.05 for Asians).

You can see the huge increase since 2022. If this had happened against any other ethnic minority, I suspect it would be the subject of many ongoing stories.

The full analysis is here:

Radio NZ report:

The team behind Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement (CCRL) says its costs have significantly increased, and the project may be mothballed if the funds cannot be found.

The landmark cathedral in Christchurch’s city centre was badly damaged in the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes.

The cost of restoration was in 2017 estimated at $104 million. That rose to $154m in 2020, but a full project review has now priced it at $248m.

That’s not at public sector levels of blowout, but still a lot.

Stewart said they were confident of fundraising another $26m, and the Anglican Church had offered $16m, “leaving a funding gap of $114 million”.

“Philanthropy alone will not provide sufficient funds to complete the project.”

Then sadly it won’t be completed as taxpayers and ratepayers should not pay.

The city has actually done very well in the 13 years without it. It’s a nice to have, not a must have.

I’m delighted to see the Government announce nice Better Public Services targets, as meeting those targets can improve life for so many New Zealanders. We have first hand experience that they can work – the last National-led Government saw immunisations rates for Maori skyrocket to the same level as non-Maori, saw hundreds or thousands of lives saved due to faster service at emergency departments.

The BPS targets are important for numerous reasons:

• They allow results to be measured and Government to be accountaable
• They incentivise agencies to work together to achieve them
• They provide a focus for Ministers and the public
• They generally are focused on outcomes, not inputs or outputs.

The last one is especially important. The difference is:

• Inputs: Action (ie spend $20 million to try and improve school attendance rates)
• Outputs: Result (50 new truancy officers are operating)
• Outcome: Impact (School attendance is up 10%)

So what are the nine targets:

1. Shorter stays in emergency departments: 95 per cent of patients to be admitted, discharged, or transferred from an emergency department within six hours.
2. Shorter wait times for (elective) treatment: 95 per cent of people wait less than four months for elective treatment.
3. Reduced child and youth offending: 15 per cent reduction in the total number of children and young people with serious and persistent offending behaviour.
4. Reduced violent crime: 20,000 fewer people who are victims of an assault, robbery, or sexual assault.
5. Fewer people on the Jobseeker Support Benefit: 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support Benefit. 
6. Increased student attendance: 80 per cent of students are present for more than 90 per cent of the term. 
7. More students at expected curriculum levels: 80 per cent of Year 8 students at or above the expected curriculum level for their age in reading, writing and maths by December 2030. 
8. Fewer people in emergency housing: 75 per cent reduction of households in emergency housing.  
9. Reduced net greenhouse gas emissions: On track to meet New Zealand’s 2050 net zero climate change targets, with total net emissions of no more than 290 megatonnes from 2022 to 2025 and 305 megatonnes from 2026 to 2030.  

I much prefer a desired outcome of 20,000 fewer crime victims than an output of 25% fewer people in prison.

I think one of the worst things the Ardern/Hipkins Government did was abandon Better Public Services targets. Not only did we see outcomes get so much worse in so many areas, we lost that focus on measuring outcomes, not just how much money we’re spending.

I wouldn’t expect a Labour-led Government to have the same BPS targets as a National-led Government but I would expect them to have their own suite they could be held accountable against.

In an ideal political world all six parliamentary parties would go into an election with their six to ten Better Public Services outcomes so that voters can see what actual impact they want to make, and hold them to account for them. This is very different to just publishing policies.

Radio NZ report:

Whangārei’s acclaimed, but controversial, Hundertwasser Art Centrecould run out of money by October 2025 – which means ratepayers may have to stump up to keep it open.

That is despite an undertaking during the long-running campaign to build the centre that it would pay its own way rather than rely on council funding.

It cost around $33 million and got over half of that from taxpayers as corporate welfare. They said they expected it to attract 450,000 visitors a year.

The trust’s half-yearly report, presented to Whangārei district councillors last month, showed the centre had 19,800 paying visitors in the second half of 2023 – a sharp drop from the 37,000 in the first four months after the doors opened.

So they are likely to get 40,000 visitors over a year, less than 10% of what was claimed. I don’t know why government keeps falling for these fantastical claims of patronage that never eventuate.

Reduced admission fees and shop sales led to a half-year loss by the Hundertwasser Art Centre of $765,000.

So a possible annual loss of $1.5 million. There are 30,000 households in Whangarei so each household will have to subsidise it on average by $50.

Liam Hehir skewers Chloe’s Swarbrick repeated claims she is a reluctant politician. He notes:

Swarbrick was born in the year of Our Lord, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-four. She completed university studies in 2016. It was that same year, with great reluctance, that a political career was essentially forced upon her as made a high profile run at the Auckland mayoralty at just 22 years of age. Generating significant media buzz, she placed a very creditable third. …

What followed was an intense contest for Swarbrick’s political loyalties. Both Labour and the Greens courted the very reluctant candidate. Somehow the Greens were able to coax her into a reluctant continuation of her political journey. Swarbrick was no doubt horrified when she received an extremely comfortable list placing that all but assured her reluctant election to Parliament in the 2017 election. 

Success has continued to follow Swarbrick. She won a brilliant if reluctant insurgency for the seat of Auckland Central in 2020, which she won despite a massive shift towards Labour. With great reluctance, she went on to successfully defend it last year. 

Things were looking up for Swarbrick when her career looked stymied by the ascent of Marama Davidson as female co-leader of the party. This made it very hard for Swarbrick to advance because, even if James Shaw retired, there would not be another space in the ruling diarchy for another female identifying candidate. 

However, destiny intervened once more. The Greens actually changed their rules in 2022 so that there could be two female co-leaders. That meant, in the event of Shaw’s retirement from the leadership, the path would be open for Swarbrick to reluctantly resume her political ascent. …

And so, with great reluctance, Swarbrick was forced to take climb yet another rung of the ladder. “[We] need everyday people to not leave politics to the politicians,” she reluctantly announced, drawing a firm line between herself as a non-politician politician and the career politicians who treat politics like a career.

Hehir concludes:

The cynics have been quick to point out that that Swarbrick has spent almost all of her of her post-university life either running for office, getting ready for office or holding office. This is a bit misleading, however. Because while political success and glory has pursued Swarbrick relentlessly, that’s not her fault. 

The record is clear, this is a very reluctant politician.

Would be nice if the media adopted the same scepticism to such ridiculous claims.

After I blogged how segregated study areas could lead to serrated tutorials and lectures, a reader alerted me to the fact this has already happened. The Law Faculty AT Canterbury University advised:

This email is to let you know that the Faculty of Law, with our support is piloting a dedicated LAWS206 tutorial group for ākonga Māori who want to be in a like-minded group for the tutorials in this subject.  We are only running one group in the pilot to see how it goes so we are not able to accommodate everyone.  So, sorry if we cannot fit you into the group. The long-term goal is to have such a group operate in all the LAWS 200s, but we are starting with the pilot in Public Law only this year.

This is well intentioned but I think a very bad idea. What does it teach future lawyers if you start by saying, hey do you want to be segregated from other races? It also potentially leads to groupthink, and a filtering of contrary views.

Simeon Brown announced:

The Coalition Government will restore the rights of communities to determine whether to introduce Māori wards, Local Government Minister Simeon Brown says.

“The Government will introduce a Bill in the coming months that will restore the ability for communities to petition their councils to hold binding polls on Māori ward decisions. This will include holding binding polls on wards that were established without the ability for local referendums to take place.

Residents, not politicians, should determine the constitutional structure of their local council. Introducing race based wards is a constitutional change, just as changing from FPP to STV is. Both types of changes should be ones for voters, not Councillors.

As signalled in our coalition agreements, affected councils will be required to hold a poll alongside the 2025 elections. The results of these polls will be binding on councils and will take effect for the local government term beginning October 2028.

“If councils do not wish to hold a poll, those councils will be given the opportunity to reverse their decision to establish Māori wards or to disestablish those wards prior to the 2025 local body elections.”

There are some Councils who voted for introducing Maori wards purely because they knew there was no ability for a referendum to sustain or veto their decision. If they know the community is against such a change, they can avoid the cost of a referendum by repealing their decision.

This will also allow voters to make informed choices in who they vote for in 2025, as all Council candidates will be on the record about whether or not they support race based wards.

I’ve often blogged on how the media will call numerous people or organisations far right our hard right, but never do so with those on the left.

Take an example – the Fabians are holding an event to discuss abolishing the NZ military. This is as far left or fringe as you can get, but I guarantee you such a term would never be used against them.

The Daily Mail report:

A Jewish woman who confronted a Met Police officer after he said that swastikas ‘need to be taken into context’ when she reported seeing them at a pro-Palestine protest has said the force needs ‘basic education’.

Jocelin Weiss, 30, was blown away after being told by police that the Nazi symbol was ‘not necessarily anti-Semitic or a disruption of public order’ when she saw it being displayed on a poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Met has sparked a major backlash, including on US news websites, after video emerged of an officer seemingly justifying the use of swastikas to Ms Weiss at Saturday’s march.

Now it shouldn’t be illegal to display a swastika, but the fact the Met Police will arrest someone for peacefully counter protesting a pro-Hamas march, and defend and justify the display of swastikas is telling.

I’ve (in order) been arrested, started a business and have had kids so somewhere between libertarian and conservative!

Katharine Moody writes:

Not good enough, Simon Court.  In a recent article, the Undersecretary for Resource Management Act (RMA) reform warned Councils that picking extreme climate scenarios in the conduct of regulatory decision-making “risks lawsuits by requiring developers to design and build to overly stringent climate warming models”.

By pulling out a yellow card, Simon Court assumes it will prevent further ‘screwing the scrum’ by over-zealous local experts and those local authorities who follow their guidance.  In my experience as a consultant planner, it won’t be enough.  

For years, I have observed a small group of local experts pushing the worst-case emission scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on businesses and home owners across New Zealand.

And yes, councils have already been taken to court on this matter; and yes, the use of these extreme scenarios have already been found to lack scientific rigour on merit review. 

The RCP 8.5 scenario is an extreme one. It assumes both that no country on earth implements any policy at all to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and that the impact is at the 90th percentile (ie the most pessimistic 10%).

Yet, her recommendations were largely ignored by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) two years later in publishing its update to the Coastal hazards and climate change guidance for local government. This updated guidance recommended not only the use of the ‘high end’ RCP8.5 scenario, but additionally a ‘high end’ extreme of that extreme scenario, which they refer to as RCP8.5H+.  The Ministry has further updatedthat guidance this year, still persisting with the recommended use of the ‘high end’ RCP8.5 scenario in coastal hazard planning.

RCP8.5 is the climate scenario that Professor Dave Frame, an IPCC lead author, describes in the article as “a scenario that nobody really believes in” ̶  except for, it seems, a small cohort of experts who appear to have secured undue influence on MFE.

To my mind, there is no remedy aside from expunging all reference to RCP8.5 from local government guidance and hence, from current planning practice.  The cost to individuals, business entities and communities of ratepayers has been more than enormous already. 

If Governments force developers to plan for a scenario that has no real possibility of occurring, the cost can run into the billions.

Nate Silver has data on how Americans have voted by their income levels over time. He says the divide is now on culture, not income.

The proportion of the lowest income group that votes Republican has been:

• 2008: 26%
• 2012: 36%
• 2016: 43%
• 2020: 43%
• 2024: 52% (polls)

We see similar patterns here, but less pronounced with more blue collar workers voting National than Labour.

The 52% in just a polling average at the moment, so it will be interesting to see the actual results in November.

A US research company asked Americans how many unarmed black men are killed by the Police each year. The actual number is around 10 a year (which is of course still too high) but they asked people if the number was 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 or more than 10,000. So each is different by an exponent.

So how many Americans thought the actual number of annual shootings of unarmed black men by Police was 1,000 or more. They break it down by political orientation.

• Very liberal: 40%
• Liberal: 28%
• Moderate: 25%
• Conservative: 18%
• Very conservative: 16%

Now this is the proportion who over-estimate deaths by a factor of 100!

The Canterbury Socialist Society are launching a campaign to justify the slaughter, rapes and torture of Jewish men, women and children on 7 October. They claim it is resistance, not terrorism.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian revolutionary Marxist group. It has been designated a terrorist organisation by the EU, Japan, Canada and the US. It used to be part of the PLO but left when the PLO abandoned its goal of destroying Israel. They do not support any two state solution.

The woman pictured on their pamphlet is Leila Khaled. She has taken part in two aircraft hijackings and has been banned from entering many countries.

Now personally I wouldn’t ban the CSS from having their pro-terrorism meeting. It isn’t against the law. But considering that Massey University tried to ban Don Brash from a public event on the basis he was too extreme, and two Canadian provocateurs had venues cancel on them after political pressure, do you think we will hear a peep from any of the usual suspects that a public meeting to justify terrorism isn’t a great idea?

AUT have published their 5th annual trust in news report and the results are devastating. Rather than blame their woes on Google and Meta, every media organisation in NZ should be critically self-reflective on how they have contributed to this distrust, and what they could do differently to improve things.

Some key data:

• NZers who trust the news has fallen from 53% in 2020 to 33% in 2024
• The drop just in the last 12 months was 9%
• This is not due to international trends. In 2020 NZ was 11% above the global average of 42% and in 2024 NZ was 7% below the global average of 40%. This is about NZ media.
• Trust in news is significantly lower than Australia and Canada
• NZ has the highest proportion (75%) of people who actively avoid the news or selected media
• The only news brand with a (just) positive score is ODT on 5/10
• Radio NZ has gone from 7.0 to 4.9
• TVNZ from 6.8 to 4.8
• NZ Herald from 6.3 to 4.7
• Stuff from 6.1 to 4.6
• 87% of those who distrust news think the news is biased and not balanced
• 82% think news too much reflects the political leanings of newsrooms
• 59% think Government support for the media means you can’t trust media to hold Govt to account

In any normal industry this would be seen as a crisis. When so many think you are biased and not balanced, your number one priority should be how to fix it, rather than deny it.

Amusingly one journalist in a fit of irony tweeted that the 20% drop was all due to the Atlas Network. You couldn’t be funnier if you tried.

Here’s some things media could to restore trust:

• Welcome diversity of political views amongst staff (and by that I don’t just mean diversity between hard left and centre left) so centre-right people would feel welcome in your organisation
• Abolish corporate policies that forbid people to have conservative views on issues such as whether men can get pregnant
• Don’t have topics where you don’t allow debate such as on the Treaty, trans issues, preferred climate change response etc
• Ensure you have some journalists who don’t automatically think equality of outcome is desirable, as opposed to equality of opportunity
• Have more journalists who understand economics
• Have more journalists who will as aggressively interview Te Pati Maori and Green MPs as they do ACT and NZ First MPs

Or you can ignore all off the above and conclude the public, like me, are the ones who are wrong and there is no need to change anything – you just need more money from taxpayers or social media companies.

The free speech debate over Rainbow story time is somewhat different to the free speech debate over allowing guest speakers to speak at a venue, but the principles are similar.

First my personal view on Rainbow story time is that in NZ it is pretty harmless. My kids have been to a couple of them, and they enjoyed them. They were totally non-sexual and they are more akin to children’s pantomimes where leading female characters are often played by men for humorous effect.

But I understand that some people are worried about them. In the US there are instances of highly inappropriate drag shows and the like which are highly sexualised in front of children. But don’t assume that what happens in the US is the same as what is done in NZ. In fact anyone who did perform a sexualised show in front of children could face prosecution under our laws.

Now if you don’t like Rainbow story times in public libraries, you should have the right to lobby against them. There is a difference between these and a controversial guest speaker at a public venue.

If a public venue is being used just as a commercial venue for an outside organisation to host someone that people want to hear from, it is wrong to say that Councils should determine who can use their meeting halls on the basis of their personal preferences.

Rainbow storytime is slightly different. This is the Council hosting the activity directly. It is organised by Council staff and presumably any costs are met by the Council. People who think it is an inappropriate activity for a Council to organise and host should be able to lobby Councillors and ask for a different policy.

But if a Council has approved a Rainbow story time, then even if you disagree with their decision, you do not have the right to disrupt it and prevent it occurring, That prevents parents who do wish to have their kids attend what they see as harmless fun doing so. Conservatives should be very wary of deciding they know better than parents what their kids can attend.

If a Rainbow story-time was inappropriately sexualised, then it could potentially break the law and the correct response is to gather evidence and present it to the authorities. If you think the law is not strict enough, then you can lobby to change the law. But don’t use the thug’s veto to close down these events.